[pcl]

Time to be “that guy”…

“Nation state” is a well-defined term in the political sciences, and we misuse it here on HN all the time. To quote Wikipedia:

“A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

[dragonwriter]

Nation-state is often used in a different sense to distinguish the participants in the Westphalian system of sovereignty from other entities that might be labelled nations and/or states; this use derives in part from the fact that the Westphalian system is itself considered the turning point to nation-states (in the sense the parent describes) as a general norm, and that the participants in that system are generally also nation-states in that primary sense. (While “state” alone is often used for this where context makes it clear that this sense of “state” it s intended, there are lots of other uses of “state”—particularly for subordinate units of certain Westphalian sovereigns—which can create ambiguity, and “Westphalian sovereign” is a lot more cumbersome than “nation-state”.)

[pcl]

But the Westphalian system explicitly emphasizes the importance of the boundaries of the state vs the size of those boundaries. The HN usage tends to imply that “nation state” is something particularly impressive. But “an attack by a San Marino-level agency” doesn’t convey that same level of impressiveness.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, in security, “nation-state level actor” is used to mean “the most capable category of attackers, most (all?) of whom are particularly powerful nation-states [0]”, not “attacker at the level of at least the least-capable nation-state”.

[0] In the “Westphalian sovereign” sense.

[VintageCool]

Russia is 81% ethnic Russian, per Wikipedia. I think that's close enough to qualify for "nation and state are congruent".

Sure, it might make more sense to define this as "state-level agency", but that would confuse things for Americans. My internet security threat model ignores the state agencies of Montana just as much as yours ignores those of San Marino.

[Angostura]

That wasn’t a misuse though - was it?

[pcl]

Well, perhaps the original poster was using it accurately.

In my experience, the common HN usage really translates to “country with a big military budget”, which is not at all what the term means.

Neither the US nor Russia are nation states. China and San Marino are both nation states. I’m guessing the poster meant “countries like the US, Russia and China”, and not “countries like China and San Marino.”

[jrochkind1]

Honestly I think they just mean "state". Yes, some states have more resources than others, but the ones without a lot of resources generally aren't engaging in cyber attacks, and "state" as a general category is good enough summary.

I think people say "nation state" in part just because it flows better rhythmically, and in part because of that whole "westphalian" thing; and because the word "state" has other confusing meanings (including in CS, state as in 'state machine'; and the 50 USA states).

But really on HN when talking about "threat actors", they mostly just mean "state-level". (See I had to add -level to make it rhythmically like 'nation state' again, the one syllable 'state' is just too short it just plops into your sentence ruining it)

[Hey, why is it called the United Nations instead of the United States anyway? Oops, cause there already is a United States. But the UN is clearly an organization of States not Nations. But the things are conflated and confused generally in European nationalist ideologies of the 18th-20th centuries, that have affected our vocabulary and concepts for these things, it's not just HN. "Nation" is often used as a synonym for "State", so "nation state" ends up just kind of doubling down]

I say "state-level actor".

Almost any contemporary liberal democracy (and not only those) at least formally defines itself as a state of it's citizens, not belonging to any particular "nation" (ie ethnicity basically) in particular. I don't see the point in distinguishing between states that are "nation" states or not in the 21st century, or think that it has a clear distinction.

[kingaillas]

>Hey, why is it called the United Nations instead of the United States anyway? Oops, cause there already is a United States. But the UN is clearly an organization of States not Nations.

States are sovereign political entities; of course modern countries tend to have a federal state made of several constituent states (see: USA, Germany, etc) where each claims certain jurisdiction. In ancient times there were city-states like Athens, Sparta... and even in 18th century Europe cities like Venice were states (Republic of Venice).

Nations are people united by something they have in common. That could be shared history, language, culture, the geographic area they live in, or something more abstract like fandom of certain sports teams or other hobbies.

There is considerable overlap between nations and states, and given state is already overloaded, extra words are added for clarity.

I like "state-level" because these sorts of exploits and attacks are really about resources, not sovereignty, territory, etc. The fact is a rich person or company could fund a team that does vulnerability research and get results on par with the top tier folks already doing it.

And, the UN should be called the "United Countries" since it is really about territorial areas. They admit members based on geographical claims; I don't see any ethnic, cultural, or fandom group (that isn't in control of some territory and thus also country/nation) as a member.

[fragmede]

It's to distinguish the hypothetical attacker and their resources from an individual or group of individuals. The threat to my personal health if Mossad is after me vs a particularly violent jilted ex-lover vs if I took down the local gang/cartel/drug dealer (ie they all want to kill me) but the level (and possibility) of defense against each of those threats are vastly different.